Things You Should Know

10. You should know that "a whole nother" doesn't actually mean anything. I bet almost every American is guilty of saying it at least once, but you cannot simply chop a word in half and stick "a whole nother" word in there. You can say "another whole", "completely separate", or "another one". Nother is not a word. Never has been. I doubt it will be in the near future. Learn to phase it our of your vocabulary. It makes you sound foolish to those who know not to use it. Now that you know, I bet you will hear this phrase all the time and it will start driving you crazy. You're welcome.

9. If you don't know this one, I am going to revolutionize your way of searching. There are more tricks than I've listed below, but these are the ones I've found most helpful.

• If you are searching for a specific phrase, use quotation marks around it.

• If you aren't sure of the spelling of what you are searching or the complete term, use an asterisk. Search engines use the asterisk as a wild card. It will find anything that can fill in the asterisk blank. (For example, if searching for President Uchtdorf and you are unsure how to spell his first name (is it i or e that comes first?!?), just type in what you know--D*r Uchtdorf, and he'll come up, I promise) It's Dieter, by the way.

• If you are using a general search engine, but want to find a result from a specific website, type the website first, then a colon, then your search and poof, there it is. (For example, wikipedia: things that are awesome)

• If you are searching for something and are tired of weeding out things you don't want, use the minus sign in your search. Say I'm searching for jaguars, but am tired of getting hits for the cars and team, I'll type: jaguar -cars -football. This will lead me to this. *Note, this method is not perfect and won't eliminate all that you don't want, but it does help.

8. There's this thing called Spotify and you should know about it. It's a combination of iTunes and Grooveshark. You download it just as you would iTunes and it imports all the music from your computer as well as allowing you to search the database for any song and add it to any playlist. Perks: you get the convenience and format (ish) of iTunes while having access to all the music that could be found on Grooveshark without having to wait for it to load. Amazing. Just letting you know though, that this is still extremely new, so you have to submit your email and wait for an invitation. It's worth it. Oh, and it's completely free.

7. You should know how many days there are until Christmas.

Christmas Countdown

6. Next year is election year. You should know who's running and what they're about. This website is good for looking at candidates from all parties as well as what their views are on different issues.

5. There are lots and lots of things that you should know that podcasts can tell you. One of my favorite podcasts is "Stuff You Missed in History" from HowStuffWorks.com. Fascinating. Did you know that Rasputin was poisoned, shot four times, beaten, and then drowned before he finally died? Hard core. He had also survived an attack on his life previous to all of this by a former prostitute turned monk-disciple. He deserved to die for having such a horrible beard.

4. Righty tighty, lefty loosey. This pertains to which way you screw or unscrew things.

3. You should know the difference between these: there, their, and they're; it's and its; and your and you're. I took a stroll poll and this seems to be one of the biggest irritants.

there: a destination (the incriminating evidence is over there)

their: plural possessive (we went to their alien-themed fiesta)

they're: a contraction of "they are" (they're this way)

Blow your mind sentence: They're over there with their things.

it's: a contraction of "it is" (it's extremely hot outside)

its: possessive, belonging to a unisex thing (don't play with its antennae)

your: second person possessive (it's your problem)

you're: contraction of "you are" (you're stinky, go take a shower)

2. Mormons are Christians. We believe in Christ, hence we are Christians.

and then you should know that...

1. Pandas can be scary. Oh, and it's almost my quarter birthday, so there.